First off, I love the bowl system. A football team has a good year and for that is rewarded by traveling to a usually warm or popular destination. The key there is being rewarded for a good season. Also, the destination should be part of the reward.
No team should ever go to a bowl without a winning record, period.
OK, with that established, what the NCAA FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) offers is 35–yes, count them, 35–bowl games for all to enjoy. Yeah, that “enjoy” part gets to be tough when you have two teams playing against each other that don’t have winning records or would otherwise have a hard time beating an FCS school (Football Championship Subdivision).
I mean, did we really get excited about the International Bowl from Toronto, Canada, featuring two bad teams from the MAC and Big East?
The 2011-2012 bowl season has its fair share of dud games that don’t need to exist–either because the teams aren’t good, the matchup is poor, the bowl location is bad or the name of the bowl is ridiculous … or all of the above.
Here’s the top six worst (although there’s more than six that are bad, so I mention six more at the end):
6. Little Caesars Pizza Bowl: Formerly the Motor City Bowl, two teams are banished to Detroit, Mich. Detroit has very few clear days in the winter and ranks in the top 10 for coldest city in the U.S. The 7-5 Western Michigan Broncos, who will probably enjoy the weather, will take on the 6-6 Purdue Boilermakers. That’s a matchup made in purgatory.
5. BBVA Compass Bowl: This was called the Birmingham Bowl originally and then the PapaJohns.com Bowl. Now it’s a bunch of vowels with direction. I’m sure the 6-6 Pittsburgh Panthers and 7-5 SMU Mustangs will relish the trip to northern Alabama. Pittsburgh rolls into the game having lost four of its last seven, while SMU is on fire, losing four of its last six.
4. Taxslayer Gator Bowl: One of the oldest bowl games, the Gator Bowl had a lot of prestige … until this year when they decided that .500 teams were more than worth the embarrassment. The Florida Gators and Ohio State Buckeyes are the lucky parties here even, though both of these huge schools had bad seasons. It pays to be big.
3. Franklin American Mortgage Company Music City Bowl: Yes, the name is a mouthful. Two powerhouses will be playing: Mississippi State Bulldogs and Wake Forest Demon Deacons. The Bulldogs finished with two out of three losses and the Demon Deacons powered their way to four losses in their last five games. A couple of 6-6 teams that your mother wouldn’t know.
2. Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas: Hey, wasn’t this bowl game in North Carolina last year? Yes, they take their dismal history and bring it to what used to be the plain old Texas Bowl and before that the plain old Houston Bowl. Another battle of .500 teams pits the Northwestern Wildcats and the Texas A&M Aggies.
1. Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl: This started as the San Francisco Bowl and currently will be hosting two teams that are so good they fired their head coaches. Yes, and not only is this a bowl with no head coaches, but the two teams come into the game with quite a record. The Illinois Illini started the season 6-0 and ended it 0-6, a BCS first. The UCLA Bruins enter the contests with a losing record–you’re reading it right–the Bruins are 6-7, which is the first time a team has had a losing record in a bowl game since North Texas won the Sun Belt Conference but were 5-6 overall.
A half a dozen other dishonorable mentions go to the AutoZone Liberty Bowl (this may be the biggest blowout with Cincinnati over Vanderbilt); Pinstripe Bowl (is that played in a New York prison?); the Belk Bowl (what the heck is a Belk?); Maaco Bowl Las Vegas (another huge blowout with Boise State over Arizona State); Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl (I’m sorry, but there’s not much that can be said of Florida International and Marshall); Famous Idaho Potato Bowl (it’s bad when a bowl game is played on a blue field in Boise).
Sources: NCAA, ESPN, College Football Poll
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